Zionist fulminations against the evocative A-word, Apartheid, will now have to contend against the ignoble G-word, Genocide.

That Israel is an Apartheid entity is now indisputable, with International Institutions and academics declaring Apartheid as a crime against humanity.

Anti-Apartheid stalwarts, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, stated that Israel’s version of Apartheid was worse than that endured by Blacks in South Africa.

The creation of the state of Israel in May 1948 was a settler-colonial enterprise in which Palestinians were displaced through a policy of terror and ethnic cleansing that made room for alien invaders from Europe and North America.

Colonial Zionism differed from other European colonial enterprises by its much more ambitious intentions: not to simply exploit the indigenous people and steal their resources, but to expel the indigenous people and move Jews onto the stolen land.

David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, categorically enunciated the Zionist agenda in 1937, well before its 1948 eruption: “We must expel the Arabs and take their places.”

From the outset Zionism, the ideology underpinning Israel, held terrorism as one of its indispensable weapons for the achievement of its dreams of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, committing scores of massacres on innocent civilians.

Ilan Pappe, the Israeli academic and author of “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine”, defined the Israeli policy towards the Gaza Strip as an “incremental genocide”. Instead of rounding up palestinians for mass execution, Israelis subtly implement policies designed to slowly erode, break up, expand land, resettle, kill and create conditions that is destructive for the indigenous population.

Basic necessities such as food and water have been blockaded, electricity cut, and infrastructure bombed beyond repair. This has compromised emergency and diagnostic services, like MRIs, CT and x-rays, intensive care units and operating theatres in 13 public hospitals; some 55 sewage pools; 48 desalination plants; and solid waste collection capacity.”

Fifty International Humanitarian organisations including WHO, Oxfam and ICRC called for an end to the blockade claiming it to be in violation of International Humanitarian Law.

Ilan Pappe opines that these ethnic cleansing operations was a preplanned policy that began in the1930’s.The strangulating siege on the Gaza Strip since June 2007 has resulted into a slow agonising journey into malnutrition, disease, depression and death.

The Gaza Strip has been subjected to three ruthless invasions-in 2008, 2012, and 2014. The cost has been devastating, in both civilian lives and infrastructure.

Thousands of Palestinians have been brutally slaughtered with the most horrible weapons including unmanned bulldozers that demolish their homes, drones that fire missiles down crowded streets, and into apartment buildings, schools, clinics and hospitals; and was showered with depleted uranium, white phosphorus, and cluster bombs.

To quote Human Rights Watch: “Israeli forces may also have knowingly or recklessly attacked people who were clearly civilians, such as young boys, and civilian structures, including a hospital – laws-of-war violations that are indicative of war crimes.”

And Amnesty International: “Deliberately attacking a civilian home is a war crime, and the overwhelming scale of destruction of civilian homes, in some cases with entire families inside them, points to a distressing pattern of repeated violations of the laws of war.”

Yotam Feldman, a former journalist with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper and director of a documentary The Lab says that Israel has turned the occupied territories into a laboratory for refining, testing and showcasing its weapons systems.

According to Jeff Halper, the Israeli-American activist who wrote War Against the People, Israel has an advantage over some of its commercial rivals – its own real time military laboratory, a testing ground with real life targets.

“You’ve got 4.5 million Palestinians that you can test these weapons and security devices on. And that’s what’s given Israel this cutting edge in the market. So that if you insert that, the whole world looks different. All of a sudden, countries that seemed to be your enemies are your friends. There’s all kinds of interests that come out.”

Over the last couple of decades, Israel has become a leading exporter of security, surveillance and military equipment, because Israeli military firms marketed their products as “battle-tested” and “combat proven” giving them competitive edge in the international arms trade.

In the past Israel was the biggest arms supplier to Apartheid South Africa and collaborated in its development of nuclear weapons, prolonging the oppression of Blacks by decades. It supplied weapons to the Rwandan government as they engaged in a genocide of the Tutsi tribe, which is considered the fastest execution of genocide in human history. And Israel also provided the Serbian government with arms as they engaged in an ethnic cleansing of Bosnians.

Israel exports arms to other terror outfits in Syria and Libya destabilising the entire region; and also to the repressive regimes around the world including the Burmese government; propping up the tyrannical regimes of al Sisi’s Egypt, autocratic kingdoms of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and other despotic and illegitimate rulers.

Israel has stoked the fires of Islamophobia, deliberately ratcheting up tensions against Muslims globally. Zionist mobilisation of racist right-wing ultra-nationalists in the USA, India and Europe, fabricating “terror” alerts and manufacturing false-flag operations, to justify their own illegitimate and immoral usurpation, occupation and colonisation of Palestine.

Israel has been a state that has sought public support by painting itself as some sort of civilizational battle between “Islam and the West.” This is similar to the Islamophobia pushed by right-wing ideologues around the world including Donald Trump who famously stated that “Islam hates us” and pushed for a Muslim ban.

Zionist warlords, like its colonialist, imperialist, ultranationalist, Fascist and Nazi ideological predecessors spawned from Europe, is addicted to war. Endless wars mean not only expansion but also huge profits at the expense of the victims.

Israel is addicted to war. Israel sees peace as a threat to its survival. The anti-Apartheid stalwarts, when they said Apartheid was worse in Israel, recognised the true genocidal nature of the Jewish state.

About the Author

Firoz Osman is a medical doctor by profession and a highly-respected South African commentator on the Zionist occupation of Palestine. A founding member and executive member of Media Review Network, he has a special interest in Palestinian political and resistance movements, Zionism, and Islamophobia